


about thirty hours and just over four grand

by Razo



Category: Red Eye (2005)
Genre: F/M, a fish can love a bird but where will they live?, a very thoroughly soundproofed basement., anyway there's some disordered eating in this fyi, that's where.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-08
Updated: 2017-09-08
Packaged: 2018-12-25 05:03:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12028704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Razo/pseuds/Razo
Summary: I may have to steal you.





	about thirty hours and just over four grand

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jungle_ride](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jungle_ride/gifts).



_The first day of freedom:_

_Hiding at home isn't safe and neither is hiding in a crowd. He_ will _chase her and does not care about making a scene in public. The only way to make him stop is to_ make _him stop._

_The first day of freedom: buy a gun. It's easy to buy guns in Florida. She's letting down her bumper stickers but frankly her Overton window hasn't moved, it's just fucking broken. She buys a gun and take it to the range to learn how to use it._

 

***

 

"No, ketamine," Jackson said. He was sitting against the opposite wall, still wearing his suit, but without the tie. Head dropped back against the wall, one hand gesturing lazily. He was tired.

There was nothing in the basement to watch but him.

"You don't remember? --Well, it can cause memory loss. Anyway, rohypnol has blue dye in it now, and it tastes awful. Unless your target is really thick, or they drink. I don't know. Curaçao and bitters."

 _Really thick_. Lisa was working up a case for the idea that Jackson was not actually an American.

"...Anyway. I don't like drugging people."

Another vague, spider silk drifting through the air hand gesture.

"I prefer social pressure, you know? And then no one has to carry anyone. But you are a violent little thing, so."

When she didn't respond, he went on.

"And you can get ketamine from a livestock vet. Which is convenient. Roofies, not so much."

Jackson kept telling her things like that, like Satan's own Microsoft paperclip, or the little HOT TIP! bubbles bobbing around in advice books. HOT TIP! Vinegar is an inexpensive and natural housecleaning product. HOT TIP! The accuracy of firearms diminishes at the barrel heats up.

Lisa leaned her forehead against the bars bisecting the room.

"So, what, you just. Go to a barn? Tell them you're having a horse emergency?"

"That sounds like a blast, Lise, but no--"

 

***

  
_Day four._

 _She's getting good with the gun. Lots of practice, but lots of motivation, too. The owner of the range is worried about her but not enough to stop taking her money._  
  
  
***

  
Of course she screamed and swore at him, and threw her shoes, and begged him to let her out, no one would have to know, of course she did. But, well. Begging hadn't ever worked before. What's the definition of stupidity, doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result?

  
Lisa wasn't stupid. If she was ever going to get out, she had to get herself out. When he wasn't there, she spent hours attacking the concrete around the base of one of the bars.

  
Jackson let her keep it up for three days before he brought her dinner on a placemat of work orders. Lisa looked at them long enough to see how deeply the bars were sunk into the ground and then set them down next to her pillow.

There was toilet paper, at least, so she didn't have to wipe her face and nose on her sheet, even if there was no plumbing.

  
***

  
_Day five._

_There's a women's shooting club. She shows up for her usual after-breakfast shoot--_

_(Jackson says, routines are the enemy._ Your _enemy, that is. Someone like me? I love knowing where you'll be every Tuesday. But surely a routine where she's literally carrying a gun isn't quite so bad?)_

_\--and there's a flock of women in bright yellow shirts._

  
***  
  
  
Lisa opened and closed her mouth a few times, rotated her jaw, until she was sure the scab on her lip wasn't going to open up and distract her. Then she nodded at Jackson. He pressed dial.

"Hi, dad. Yeah, I know, I'm sorry, I really am, but--okay. Okay. Yes! God, yes, it's so beautiful up here. Not great cell reception on the hikes, but--"

She wanted to keep talking. Keep hearing his voice. But Jackson's death's-head face started getting impatient, and Lisa hadn't actually been to Alaska before. The call ended after barely five minutes. Jackson rolled a half-full water bottle under her cell door.

"Easy," he said. "Don't make yourself sick."

 

***

  
_Day ten._

_She's been going out to eat a lot. The tiny freedom of choosing her own food became obsessive down there in the dark under the house. How much, and when, and what, and food that you had to cut with a knife--messy wings and hollandaise sauce and thick steak and giant, steaming bowls of fish soup. Other days she skips meals, half to test herself and half because she can._

_How nice, to make it through the specifically female meat grinder of adolescence without an eating disorder, to get one inculcated in her by a sociopath._  
  
  
***

 _Why_ got a couple of different answers. Because you pissed me off. Because the football season's over. Because my lease won't let me have a dog. Because figure it out yourself.

Once, on a particularly bad night, he slammed his hand against the bars, and asked what do men in his position usually want from women in hers? and Lisa's flinch came bubbling up obediently.

"I don't believe you," she croaked out, after several long seconds. Jackson had already started turning away. At that, he turned back. There was a fine and singing tension in his jaw and shoulders. The light was good, down there, when he wanted it to be.

"You could do that any time," she said. "I couldn't stop you. If you just wanted to _fuck_ me none of this was necessary."

Jackson's face had that pinched, irritable, _I have to assume she's going to read that_ look, and he stood there in silence for long enough that Lisa felt her mouth going dry. Her heart started to slam against its own, smaller cage. He was going to do something, going to burst into motion the way he did sometimes, she had pushed too far--

Then, suddenly, Jackson's face smoothed out. He blinked. He did--something, something with the tight coil of his body that made all the threat drain away like pulling a plug, something that made the hard flat eyes light and easy. He smiled and tilted his head and leaned against the bars, some undefinable thing making it a boyish slouch, not a loom. His voice was low and confiding.

"Lise," he said. "I told you. I told you on the plane."

And then he was off, clattering up the stairs. He left the light on.

It occurred to Lisa, that night, trying to sleep with the light sticking sharp fingers under her eyelids, that she was jealous. Even when she wanted to be genuine, she had to think about it. She had to remember her books. Matching, mirroring, personal space, facial expressions, don't talk too long. Jackson flipped between personas without a hint of strain. It must have made things so easy.

Lisa took her shirt off and draped it over her eyes.

 

***

_Day twenty._

_Lisa wants a shower with a visceral and near-sexual longing. To stand under that pounding spray, to feel really, truly clean--if there's a heaven, and she now believes in hell so why not that other thing, it's full of hot showers. The smell of baby wipes makes her want to puke. Baths are fine, but it's just not the same, and fuck if Jackson will take this from her, too._

_She tackles the problem of the shower cubicle being too small by leaving the door open, the curtain open, and putting towels down on the floor. She puts her gun on the sink. She washes out soup cans and fills them with washers and coins and sets them in front of every window and door. With a string tied to the lid, she knocks one over while sitting next to the tub. It's clearly audible even with the water running._

_It still takes nearly half an hour to get under the spray. She blesses massive hotel water heaters._

***

Captivity was horrible and terrifying and also _boring_. He brought her magazines, sometimes, not even books, just magazines. Celebrity gossip. Bait and Tackle. It was impossible not to spark, when that door opened, when she heard those footsteps on the stairs. Were they slow, was he tired or carrying something? Were they fast, and he'd be chatty and anecdotal?

Mostly they were neither. Mostly Jackson was a measured and meticulous, even fussy man, an administrator, a man who did terrible things with all the right permits. Lisa was apparently an anomaly from the very first plane ride. He freely admitted he'd had no backup plan for "the grandmother of a hotel manager buys the farm"--he'd known so much about her because he knew that much about everyone involved in that little mise-en-scène. Hopping a plane and terrorizing her had been exactly the kind of seat of the pants nonsense he hated.

Today they were heavy. His legs appeared, in creased pants and dirty shoes. Which probably meant his mood was going to be apocalyptic.

Lisa sat very still on her cot.

Jackson's face was thunderous. Still, his movements were precise and calm as he shoved her dinner tray under the cell door.

" _Eat_ ," he snapped at her, when she didn't move.

Only when she grabbed the tray did he sit down, and rub his face with his hand.

"Rough day at the office, dear?" Lisa said, because there was a difference between telling yourself to endear yourself to your captor and actually, you know, doing it.

"It's so hard to get good help these days," Jackson said thinly.

"Where do you even find killers for hire?" she wondered. She stabbed a broccoli with enough passion one of the plastic fork tines snapped. "Craigslist?"

"Lots of places, but I prefer to grow my own," he said. "The problem is, you can't know if they'll break under pressure until they're actually under fucking pressure, and then--these are _dry clean only!_ "

"Poor you."

But he wasn't listening. Lisa had moved on from the more gender essentialist self help books by then, but God, men loved to monologue, didn't they?

"Some people thrive under pressure," Jackson said. "Like you, Lise. And some people piss their pants and try to run away to Mexico. Mexico. As if I can't find someone in fucking Mexico. I could walk to Mexico."

"Like me," Lisa echoed. She looked around her cell. "Thriving."

"This is just temporary," he said, and Lisa dropped the fork.

  
***

  
_Day forty._

_After trauma #1 the books helped. Rape is a terrible tragedy every time but it's not. It's not a new one. She couldn't speak to anyone out loud about it but there were books and books had always helped her. Helped her learn ways to calm herself, to stand straight again, to grocery shop again, to fit what had happened to her into some kind of narrative._

_Trauma #2, there were no books. No support groups. No blogs, even. Veteran's accounts helped a little, though she felt guilty about it. Her encounter with Jackson had only taken a day, hadn't been war. But it had been some kind of anvil, and Lisa had come out the other side feeling like someone had kicked down boarded up doors in her own skull, and she didn't know who she was, now. She had feelings she had no words for and experiences no one she knew could empathize with. It was the most profoundly lonely time in her life._

_Trauma #3--there actually were books. Books about captivity. About what happened in someone's head when everything in their life depended on someone else's good will. About isolation and confinement. Lisa knew she'd gone a little mad and still, and still, and still, she could not pick up a book, could not put a word to--to what had--_

***

 

"I'm the best thing that's ever fucking happened to you," Jackson said. Low, fast, vicious. "No one has ever paid this much attention to you. No one has ever made you think so fast or fight so hard. You wouldn't know who you really were, if not for me. You should be _grateful_."

 

***

  
_Day seventy-two._

_Lisa buys free weights because she can't be armed in a gym. She works out while Turner Classic movies plays quietly in the background. It's soothing. She still likes old movies. As throughlines go it's fairly weak but she'll take any evidence that Lisa Reisert is still in there._

_In another life she'd have died before being the Weird Customer in a hotel._

 

***

  
"While you were out? I searched you for phones and things you could stab me with," he said. Lisa hadn't really thought he'd done anything. That's why she hadn't asked until now. It had been... some weeks, by then. But he'd just come down the stairs and he was ready to leave already so she just. Blurted something. "That's it."

"Why?" she said. She'd read last April's Vogue to tatters. "You could have done anything."

"What, while you couldn't even remember it? Sounds like a waste of perfectly good trauma, to me," he said.

And she

And she

 

***

_Day eighty._

_Her dad wants her to visit. She keeps putting it off. It makes her feel sick, but what could she say to him? I put you in danger? Not only that, but I've become a danger to others, too? An insurance adjuster would total me, dad, there's not enough of the original frame left to salvage. I can't sit across the table from you and pretend I don't watch the exits._

 

***

 

 _I grow my own. Like you, Lise. I told you on the plane. I may have to_ \--

"Are you. Are you _recruiting_ me?" she said, the plastic fork lying between her feet. Immediately it felt like the stupidest thing that had ever come out of her mouth, but the freeing thing about Jackson was that he had seen her cry, scream, bleed, menstruate, fight, lie, and go weeks without showering, so it wasn't like saying something ridiculous was going to damage his opinion of her more than emptying her bucket would.

Jackson smiled at her.

"I knew you'd get it," he said. "I told you I might have to steal you, didn't I?"

"That's... that's very, very insane," Lisa said.

"Eat your dinner," he said, and turned towards the stairs.

 

***

_Day one twenty._

_Someone from the shooting group at the range has a sniper rifle. A whole bunch of them troop out to the outskirts of town to lay in the weeds and take turns failing to murder coke cans. Lisa gets sand down her bra and a sunburn._

_Later they make their way back into town and into a coffee shop, fizzy with excitement and slightly too loud, reliving their best shots over and over again. Lisa orders an Americano in a vague, distracted voice, thinking of the pressure of the stock against her shoulder, the sandy soil on her stomach, the folded up piece of paper she keeps in her back pocket. Her neck knife taps against her sternum when she moves._

_"Name for the order?" the barista asks._

 

***

 

"I'm having a female-driven emotion based dilemma," she said. She was refusing to get out of her cot or turn towards him. "So sorry."

"At least half the people who try to kill me are women," Jackson said, coaxingly. "I have every respect for women. I just said that to piss you off. Come on. Talk to me."

"Die in a hole."

"Not one of your choices tonight."

From the sound of it, he was leaning against the bars.

 

***

_Day one hundred twenty._

_"Lise," she says, without thinking about it, and her whole body locks up._

_The high school student manning the register, not being privy to this inner turmoil, just looks annoyed at having to ask for her credit card more than once. Lisa winds her way back to the table, floating high above her body, and makes her excuses to the group. Too much sun. Got to go. So sorry._

 

***

 

She laughed, okay? She laughed. A short, sharp bark of laughter, the helpless noise you make when a joke catches you so off guard you can't muffle that first shout.

Lisa pulled back and away from the bars like they were a hot stove.

His face said, _got you_.

She was very afraid her face said, _I know._

 

***

_Day one seventy three she visits her father and day one seventy four she spends recovering from that. No shooting that day. No weights. Just piles of takeout and lots of Bollywood._

_Bollywood's a new interest but not one that makes her feel contaminated. They're just longer, and have more singing, and almost none of the leading men have eyes like frozen water._

  
***

"Here's some male driven logic based action for you," Lisa said, and lifted one arm, and one finger.

"Lise," his tone was wheedling. Jackson could force her to do what he wanted, but even more, he wanted her to obey willingly. "Talk to me. I can't help you if you don't talk to me."

"Fine," she said. She shoved her sheet down. Sat up. Turned to face him. "I'm wondering if I'm going to die without ever touching another human being again."

Jackson looked at her. His adding-up-the-ledger look.

"Nice," he said. "Not quite in tears, but close. Nice break in your voice. If I were as stupid as you think I am, I definitely would have let you get close enough to me to make yourself a nasty mistake."

She flopped back down.

"Who says it would be a mistake?"

"I'm stronger than you," Jackson said. "Most men are going to be. Keep that in mind. If it comes down to a physical fight, you need to be faster and lot more vicious."

"I don't think that will be a problem."

 

***

 

_Two hundred days and she hasn't seen hide nor hair of Jackson. She can shower with the curtain closed now. Did he die?_

_***_

_Two hundred and twenty. Did he get bored?_

_***_

_Two hundred and thirty. Head blows aren't magic. Even odds you kill someone or you just piss them off. Lisa might actually be a murderer, she realizes, with some surprise. Jackson hadn't seemed mortal enough, for that. He wasn't just a man, he was the hinge her whole life had turned around, could he be dead? Dead of a simple little--_

***  
  
Jackson hadn't watched the cameras that day. She had thought he wouldn't, based on the things he said that week. Either way she couldn't wait any longer.

When the light clicked on, Lisa was sitting in the farthest corner of the cell. A twisted bit of metal, lovingly, painstakingly ripped from her cot, lay visible in front of her foot. Blood covered her hands and wrists. Her head lolled against the wall, eyes closed.

Jackson swore. He was across the room and into the cell as fast as thought--he had some real speed for a self-proclaimed middle manager. He crouched down in front of her and grabbed for her hand.

Lisa slammed her forehead into the bridge of his nose. His little pro-tips held good; getting hit in the nose tended to startle even professionals. He flinched backwards. She used his momentum to swarm up him, sending him crashing to the ground. His head hit the concrete with a meaty, satisfying thunk, like hitting a coconut with a machete. Lisa jumped off him like an Olympic sprinter and scrambled for the stairs.

She heard his feet hit the bottom of the steps as her hands were touching the door and found some extra well of terrified adrenaline. She blew through the door, spun, slammed it, and locked it in time to hear a him thump into it.

He'd be able to open it from that side, that's just who he was--she shoved a bookshelf over, sending it crashing down in front of the door. A few more seconds leeway. Into the kitchen. The knife block. The long chef's knife. Into the living room--it was the blandest possible house, middle class in the most toothless _live laugh love_ kind of way, did he actually like this? She knew so much about him and so little--

A large black backpack on the table. A piece of paper on top.

She couldn't hear anything from the basement. Her name was on the paper.

 

***

  
_Day two thirty five._

_Lisa tries to talk to a man. It goes poorly._

_She doesn't feel scared of him, which had been her worry. He even has blue eyes. Her heart rate stays even. She drinks a screwdriver. They talk about working out and learning Spanish and he recommends her some books, even though she tries to discourage him._

_It's all perfectly pleasant and so, so, so boring. What would he do, if she threw her drink in his eyes, slammed a steak knife through the back of his hand, tipped the table? Would he want her dirty, in the dark, tear-streaked, broken nailed, screaming? She is in pieces and they are all sharp and the only person in the world who could accept her is the one who held the hammer in the first place.  
_

_And he's gone._

_She goes back to her hotel room alone and cries in the shower._

_The best thing that's ever fucking happened to you. The best thing that's ever. Fucking. Happened. To. You._

***

The bag had her purse in it and stacks and stacks and stacks of bills. Mostly hundreds. Some twenties. There was still no sound from the basement.  
  
The note said:  
  
_Lise--take it, if you want it. Or go call the cops, tell them all about the good times we had together. Show them your cot. Hug your father. There are video feeds. Plenty of evidence. This time there won't be any doubt you were an innocent victim._  
  
_Or take the money._  
  
_But if you take the money, I will come find you._

 

***

On day three hundred and sixty six, there's a knock on her door. Lisa leaves her gun on the bedside table before she goes to answer it.


End file.
